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Save Code Share! Sign the Open Letter

Free software development as we know it is being threaten by
the proposed review of the European Copyright Directive. After many delays,
the Legal Affairs Committee (JURI) of the European Parliament will
vote in June 2018 (20 and 21).

Especially, the Article 13 could harm Free Software and their communities.
Free Software is often built by
collaborative networks of programmers that rely on code hosting
services. Free Software allows and encourages modifications and
improvements made by everyone. For that, the software is shared with
everybody under terms that allow using it, studying its source code,
sharing it along, and customising it according to one's needs. This is
often done on code sharing platforms.

With its copyright proposal, the EU has decided to update the rules
applicable for online service providers, mainly targeting content
sharing platforms. The new rules proposed by the EU will create legal
uncertainty for developers using online tools when contributing to the
Free Software projects through online code sharing platforms. Those
proposed obligations on code sharing platforms will threaten their
existence, and effective online co-development by:

Imposing on code sharing platforms the use of costly filtering technologies — also refered to as censorship machines — to prevent any possible copyright infringement